Should we bring back the dinosaurs?

[Kryten]

The same logic as trying to domesticate a wild wolf. If you've ever heard stories of people trying to domesticate wolf hybrids, you know what I mean.

I... what? Seriously? Do you not know what a dog even is?

[The Jedi Master]

I... what? Seriously? Do you not know what a dog even is?

I meant in the modern day. Dogs are already domesticated. With dinosaurs, we'd have to start from scratch.

[Kryten]

The only difference between when dogs were initially domesticated and 'the modern day' is that we know the details of selective breeding and do it deliberately. The domestication of dogs would have been a massively protracted, gradual process extending over hundreds of years; it took the soviets about 30 years to make domesticated foxes.

[maccollo]

This mentality killed many a scientist.

How would this get them killed? Besides, it's not the scientist who would do it for the money. They would do it for the science, mostly. The institutions who would fund the research would do it for the money and the publicity.

Anyway, your point is irrelevant cuz money.

The same logic as trying to domesticate a wild wolf. If you've ever heard stories of people trying to domesticate wolf hybrids, you know what I mean.

Actually, we did

For a more recent example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

But if your point is that you can't domesticate 'a' wild wolf then yeah... Of course you can't. But then you can't domesticate anything. You can't "domesticate" a dog either.

In order for a species to become domesticated it has to not be domesticated at the offset.

You can't "go to London" if you are already in London.

But domesticated or not, rich people would pay handsomely to have their own little raptor. Especially the more eccentric types.

Supposedly to eat the other guy.

Again, dinosaurs were animals, not monsters. They would not survive machine gun fire.

Edited December 24, 2013 by maccollo

[jwenting]

I meant in the modern day. Dogs are already domesticated. With dinosaurs, we'd have to start from scratch.

we did it once, we could do it again if it weren't for the animal rights movement, the liability lawyers, etc. etc. all of which have nothing to do with the animal and everything with the human.

Effectively, we've domesticated ourselves to the point we're mentally incapable of domesticating animals.

[Kruleworld]

Doing research on gene manipulation is fine, but i don't think we need a live-dinosaur-theme-park, period.

[iDan122]

If we were to raise a dinosaur, if we actually got our hands on its clean DNA, how do we grow it? Do we make an artificial embryo-pouch or inject the fetus in its earliest state into another large animal?

[ZetaX]

You know that dinosaurs were egg-laying, right¿

[greatorder]

Bring them back in a contained environment is all fine by me. However, if they were then released into the wild, it could have disastrous ecological impacts.

[DaveofDefeat]

Dinosaur hunting!

[dacamp66]

Folks, the dinosaurs aren't extinct, if you want to see one, just look up into the sky some autumn day and you will see the dinosaurs migrating south for the winter.

[Winter Man]

Folks, the dinosaurs aren't extinct, if you want to see one, just look up into the sky some autumn day and you will see the dinosaurs migrating south for the winter.

*slow clap for the same damn response given at least once a page*

Anyway, to address the main question. We should try. We should try because it's difficult, because people say it can't be done and so we can say we tried. That's what people mean when they repeat that 'FOR SCIENCE' mantra (most of the time just repeating it because it's the 'in' thing to say now, but still). What people don't seem to be able to understand is we don't need to extract a complete chunk of DNA from a fossil or a mosquito to clone from, we can take many samples and sequence it. Already we have sequenced a 700,000 year old horse genome and it's thought that the coming year will see the million-year mark broken. After that it gets progressively more difficult but you're building on a foundation of work done by others already. 'Standing on the shoulders of giants' or however Ian Malcolm put it. Maybe it'll take us another hundred years but it'll get done.

[G'th]

Bringing them back on the scale that Jurrassic Park displays would be dumb.

However, bringing certain species back (with a limited and strictly controlled population) wouldn't be, because it would give us direct insight into how these animals behaved, with a degree of accuracy that we don't have just looking at fossils.

Hell, just seeing what these creatures actually did look like would be invaluable. For instance, if a T-Rex did actually roar, what does it actually sound like?

Its things like that that makes this idea worthwhile.